Goodbye
by RainingFlowers
Summary: He'd wiped her mind, and told her family that they mustn't ever let her remember. But how could he stop the world from giving her reminders? Come to that, how could he stop her from giving herself nudges? One-shot.


**A/N: **_Merry Christmas._

_Yeah, I know, must seem like a miracle that I'm actually posting something. Sorry to all those who have me on author alert and were expecting something HP-related...nah, who'm'I kidding? Anybody expecting anything from me? Pfft._

_But yeah. Life, y'know. I've been letting too many plot bunnies run away from me this year, so, y'know. It's Christmas, and I was watching the rerun of Doctor Who on BBC3 the other day, and when the plotbunny ambushed, I just thought...hey, it's Christmas. Small present from me to the few that'll ever see it. And yeah, it's slightly depressing, but it has its own sorta innate kinda like...something, y'know? And so, without any further ado, and after an already extremely long and rambly author's note, I give you, as a one-off comeback, _Goodbye.

**Disclaimer:** _Ain't mine, bud. All of this belongs to the BBC. Russell T Davies. Whoever._

_

* * *

_Goodbye

She'd had that feeling for a while, now. That kind of feeling where you had a feeling that you should be feeling that something was wrong. Just little subtle things. Her mum, acting normally. Well, that was normal, but something just seemed a little...off. And her gramps, well he was still his dotty old self, but sometimes she'd catch him looking at her. Just looking at her, a little sadness showing through at times.

Plus there was the whole furore over that thing everyone seemed to be going on about, what with the planet moving or some other nonsense. Yeah, because like the entire Earth could just pack its bags and go on a hike across the universe.

Honestly, _she_ hadn't noticed a thing, and so it didn't _have_ to have happened. Maybe there was something in the water, and the whole world was mass hallucinating. Just like that thing with Big Ben, whatever it was, and some sort of thing with a spaceship, and people standing on the roofs, and all that other weird stuff that she always coincidentally seemed to miss. Who actually believed that sort of thing, anyway? It was like the entire world was playing some sort of practical joke on her.

Yeah, she wished. Like the whole world would bother to play a practical joke on a temp from Chiswick.

But anyway, there was some other weird things as well. Like some of the crazy stuff that happened, right, like Big Ben and the roof or whatever, she heard about them pretty soon. But some of the other stuff, like, what was it, a Christmas star? Flying blocks of _fat_? Sky turning into fire and the earth magically being transported? Yeah, she didn't hear about those ones for quite a while.

But like she'd said, it was only a feeling of a feeling of a feeling that something was wrong, so most of the time, she ignored it. There were far more important things to think about.

Like that sale on at Woolworths. Boy was she going to splurge.

* * *

Wilfred sighed as he watched his granddaughter bustle off on some trivial matter. The Doctor hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that Donna would be back to what she was before, as if she'd never met him.

She didn't even join him at his telescope any more.

He didn't want to come across as ungrateful, and he did still love her however she was, but it just couldn't be denied. She had been _better_ when she was with the Doctor, a better soul. Now, well, she was back to acting like one of them characters on them sketch shows they show on TV all the time.

He sighed again, and then put the kettle on to put in his Thermos while he looked for his warm coat. He had a promise to keep, after all.

* * *

Donna shuffled through the door, depositing her many and varied shopping bags in the hallway and calling out an, "I'm home."

"Well, thank goodness," her mother yelled from the kitchen. "It was starting to get dark outside."

Donna rolled her eyes exasperatedly as she shrugged off her coat. "I am a grown woman, mother, I think I can handle myself in the dark!"

"Oh, a grown woman, are you? You might want to show it by getting yourself a job!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Donna pulled a face in the direction of the kitchen and gathered up all her shopping bags again, stomping up the stairs into her room.

She emptied all her purchases on the bed to inspect them. There was that dress she got for Suzie's party next weed, and the shoes she got for Marianne's birthday that was coming up...

Seeing something she was sure she couldn't remember picking up in any shop, she frowned. Maybe she'd picked up someone else's bag by mistake, because there was no _way_ she would've bought such an idiotic looking long brown overcoat...

Just as she was about to shove the coat back into the bag to take it back into the shop and demand a refund, she paused. There was something awfully familiar about this coat...

The images came in small, quick flashes at first. A quick flash of the brown overcoat. _The skinny man who wore it..._

She blinked a bit, trying to clear her vision. Where had she seen that man before?

_...a blue box..._

What the hell had a blue box got to do with anything?

_...bigger on the inside..._

_...spaceship...time machine..._

_..."called the TARDIS"..._

The newly purchased coat and the bag containing its receipt fell from her hands to the floor.

She was blinking rapidly, trying to discern one image—no, memory, they were memories—from another...

_... "I'm the Doctor"... "Doctor _who_?"... "No no, just the Doctor"..._

_... "We can travel through time and space"..._

_...a giant red spider...the man who she was going to marry..._

_...the Thames, completely drained of water..._

She was only vaguely aware of her body now. She was frozen, but shaking...shaking so much...and her skin felt uncomfortably hot...

_...so long, trying to find him...just looking for trouble...never holding down a proper job..._

_... "Just call for me, Gramps, if you ever see it"..._

_...mouthing at each other across two sheets of glass and a room, both ignoring the fact that they were meant to be hiding..._

_...little blocks of fat waving at her as they rose into the sky..._

It was a positive tsunami, now, as the pictures and voices all tried to return into her mind at the same time.

_...shadows, such deadly shadows, stretching out towards them..._

_...the foggy sky cleansed, by a sheet of pure fire, stretching as far as the eye could see..._

_...Agatha Christie...a giant wasp..._

_...a steaming, red-hot volcano..._

_...a room, full of green plants, and such beautiful life..._

_...a snowy background, with creatures—the Ood, they're called the Ood—singing to her, singing about her...always remembered to them..._

She was shaking violently now, and she felt too hot, but she could barely notice. She stared ahead, eyes nearly popping out while not seeing what they saw at all.

_...a nuclear explosion...sleeping in a kitchen..._

_... "Bad Wolf"..._

Her head, oh, her head, it was killing her...

_... "the Earth's gone"..._

_... "don't you dare give up on me..." ..._

_...a robot, a Dalek, shooting him, the Doctor...the hand, the golden mist..._

_...the Doctor-Donna._

And that was when she screamed.

A single, short second had passed since Donna Noble dropped the coat she'd subconsciously bought.

* * *

He heard the scream even from the allotment.

"Donna!"

Wilfred dropped his cup of tea, already sprinting away as fast as his old bones could carry him, thinking only of his granddaughter as her scream continued.

* * *

All that knowledge...all that pain. She remembered, now. A human, with the mind of a Time Lord. Oh, what a great idea it had seemed at the time. How brilliant, all the things she could do...but she always knew, right from the beginning, even if she tried to hide it. She'd always known. She knew that the only way for her to have lived was if he'd wiped her mind. She understood that. But she'd tried to ignore it, and protested, when the Doctor, the great, brilliant Doctor, forced her to face facts. She was going to have travelled with the Doctor forever, her entire life. Even when she got old, she thought, she'd be travelling through space and time.

But she would always have left him, whatever happened. She could have died, though he chose to make her forget about him. But she would still have left him, either way.

And she never even said goodbye to him.

Her skin was on fire, she could feel it. Her eyes were rolling back into her head. She could sense that she was lying on the floor, and there was somebody else in the room beside her. Probably her mother.

Oh, the pain. She was going to die, now. She knew that, as well.

_Last chance to say it, then. For him. The Doctor._

She took a few last gulping breaths.

"Goodbye, Doctor..." Donna Noble whispered, then was still.

Her skin was still hot to the touch.

* * *

Donna's funeral was never going to be a quiet affair. But among the other grieving friends of Donna's, a few familiar faces appear. Martha Jones, sitting with Jack, Gwen and Ianto. Sarah Jane and Luke, not far away. Even Mickey is there. All those paying respect to the most important woman they had ever known, without whom the entire universe—indeed, all the universes, would not still be there without.

And later, after her burial, a man in a long brown overcoat quietly walks up to her tombstone, after the crowds have dispersed. He stands there for a while, staring down at the patch of ground, posture slumped and full of regret.

Wilfred walks up behind him, having waited, knowing that the Doctor would come sooner or later. In his hand, he holds a plastic shopping bag. "Here," he says, offering the bag to the Doctor. "I think this was intended for you, Doctor."

The other man looks at it in surprise. His eyebrows go up when he takes the bag and looks inside.

"Aye, she was always looking after you," Wilfred comments, with a small smile. "I guess she though you needed a spare, for when the other's being washed."

The Doctor cracks a sad smile, but it disappears quickly.

After a while, Wilfred walks away again, and much later, the Doctor finally turns away, new overcoat in hand.

"Goodbye, Donna."

* * *

**A/N: **_...yeah, I lied, that was just completely depressingness, weren't it? Screw innate sense of something. _

_Ah well. Have a nice Christmas anyway._

_I did originally have a bit of a longer grave-scene, but it just got dragging and a little forced after a while, so I cut it before I got more carried away. And this whole thing isn't great, I know, but eh. Just keeping my writing skills exercised. For what reason, I have no idea. Anyway._

_Doctor Who Christmas Special in a coupla hours! XD_

_So for now, Toodles, and have a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year._

_P.S. Caged Wolf? And all those various other stories I may have started and are still unfinished? Whyever should they be mentioned at all? *innocently shuffle away unnoticed*_


End file.
